Welcome to the benchmark thunderdome. Nvidia RTX Spark is here — I’m now allowed to tell you about my last week testing it, and benchmark it for you live.
This isn’t just a new laptop chip — it’s an Arm-based Grace CPU glued to a Blackwell RTX GPU sharing up to 128GB of unified memory. If you want a diary of my thoughts and experiences all throughout the past seven days, I’ve written about my week living with RTX Spark.
But this live blog is for those who want numbers-based answers to the key claims Nvidia has made: does it run games? How fast is that CPU? Can that local AI capability automate your life? Is the Arm emulation as good as they say? Does it really have all-day battery life?
I’ve been testing this Surface Laptop Ultra in my lab all week, and while I can’t tell you my thoughts on the hardware itself, for the next few hours, I can share everything I found out about the chip itself.
Keep this page open. Let’s break some silicon.
Where to buy RTX Spark laptops
- MS Surface Laptop Ultra: $2,599 @ MS Store
- HP OmniBook X AI 14: $2,999 @ HP
- HP OmniBook Ultra AI 16 OLED: $3,199 @ Best Buy
- Lenovo Pro 9n: $2,999 @ Lenovo
- Lenovo Yoga 9n 2-in-1: $2,999 @ Lenovo
- MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ OLED 2-in-1: preorder for $3,299 @ MSI
- Dell XPS 16: $3,799 @ Best Buy
- Asus ProArt P14: $6,499 @ Asus
- Asus ProArt P16: $4,499 @ Asus
LIVE UPDATES
What about 3DMark gaming benchmarks?
This is where Nvidia gets its lick back against the competition. It has a massive Blackwell RTX GPU in it after all, and when you look at the 3DMark numbers, it matches up to something you’d see in an RTX 5070 gaming laptop — even when tasked with x86 emulation in some of these tests.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
|
3DMark test |
Nvidia RTX Spark (6144-core GPU) |
Apple M5 Pro |
AMD Ryzen AI Max 395+ |
Intel Core Ultra X9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Fire Strike Ultra (x64) |
7492 |
n/a |
6050 |
3555 |
|
Time Spy Extreme (x64) |
6060 |
n/a |
4689 |
3226 |
|
Steel Nomad |
2912 |
2335 |
1895 |
1483 |
|
Solar Bay Extreme |
10594 |
9108 |
6047 |
4015 |
The two that are n/a on Apple M5 Pro aren’t available on the 3DMark suite for MacBooks.
Let’s get into Geekbench 7
The gates are open, so let’s get straight to the CPU math. How does Nvidia’s Arm-based Grace CPU stack up against Apple, AMD and Intel?
Here is the brutal truth: if you’re looking for RTX Spark to claim that single- and multi-core crown from the Cupertino crew, you won’t find it. In Geekbench 7, the RTX Spark’s speeds are noticeably slower than Apple’s M5 Pro and Max chips by quite a margin. Things get closer on the multicore when compared to Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, but single-core prowess still exists.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
|
Chip |
Geekbench 7 single-core |
Geekbench 7 multi-core |
|---|---|---|
|
Nvidia RTX Spark (20-core CPU) |
2604 |
23610 |
|
Apple M5 Pro |
3690 |
29659 |
|
Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme |
3214 |
23645 |
|
AMD Ryzen AI Max 395+ |
2407 |
20856 |
|
Intel Core Ultra x9 388H |
2574 |
17223 |
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